ZShakespeare posted:

I don't really think that particular policy point would get the Liberals or NDP to stop having dogshit policy that drives down voter engagement. I think that the only way to move that needle is to pressure your MP/MLA directly. For example if they were to applaud a Nazi in parliament it would be a good idea to harass them about it. Maybe do a little protest. Stuff like that. I'm particularly hopeful for the student protests in the states right now, as a good example.

Kraftwerk posted:

What pressure?
We don’t have any resources or leverage!

Evis posted:

Regularly discussing voting in a politics thread seems appropriate?

ZShakespeare posted:

It's specifically the hysterical "If you post in this thread that you aren't going to vote for the 99% Hitler party you might as well be executing women and LGBTQ in the streets personally"

Kraftwerk posted:

Modern society is set up so that while we continuously seem to have less and less to lose what little we do have is too much to lose for us to risk suffering through the kind of real effort it would take to force our political leaders to the bargaining table.

I must remind you all that following WW1 and WW2 you had a majority male population who just risked their lives for your political survival returning to the country with real military experience. Many of them are non commissioned officers or veterans who have put people in the ground and know how to operate weapons and fight a real war.

If you didn’t do something to placate and make these people comfortable and continued to subject them to garbage material conditions they would have eventually mobilized into a full scale revolution.


Compare that to today where we’ve successfully divided allies into distinct camps who consider themselves separate from others despite all being different flavors of oppressed. You’ve got land owners got worked their lives to get on the property ladder that are scared the unhoused will take their expensive slice of paradise away from them. You’ve got blue collar salt of the earth people convinced the earth is flat and the immigrants are coming to take away their jobs and way of life. Finally you’ve got various minorities and young people besieged by both capital and those other groups fighting for their slice of the proverbial pie.

On top of all that is a relentless multi billion dollar propaganda machine that even the fever dreams of Joseph Goebbels couldn’t conceive. A machine that drives us to consume and spend while dividing and atomizing us through algorithms so we become unconscious to the degree of exploitation and artificial divisions we have built around us.

How the gently caress do you fight against that? The second you gain any kind of traction, every bot and media apparatus on the internet will be muddying the waters with a megaphone the size of the moon mainlining propaganda to counter you. All so the interests of the wealthy elites are safe and protected.

There’s no way to construct the mass movement necessary for us to put the real kind of pressure needed. We’re all just those weirdos that get ignored. The people who would normally listen to us and side with us are too busy talking about Klaus Schwab, the great reset and QAnon bullshit due to all the factors I mentioned above.

Kraftwerk posted:

What pressure?
We don’t have any resources or leverage!
The only pressure that they’d reasonably notice or react to would get most of us thrown in prison.

Fart Amplifier posted:

Nobody says this. You're the IK inflaming rhetoric right now.

Fart Amplifier posted:

Nobody says this. You're the IK inflaming rhetoric right now.

Bleck posted:

I know this always comes as a shock to neolibs but saying different words that mean the same thing is not actually meaningfully different enough to justify saying "hey nobody said this"

Fart Amplifier posted:

If you advocate for voting for Party A, and I think that Party A is the Hitler Party, then I say that you're advocating for voting for the Hitler Party, I am engaging in propaganda, not honest debate.

ZShakespeare posted:

This is actually an excellent characterization of people who say "if you don't vote for the Liberal party you are supporting the conservative party". Kudos.

Fart Amplifier posted:

So when I described the propaganda you're engaging in, you recognize it as an excellent characterization of something else that you don't like. Will you stop doing the thing that you recognize to be equivalent to a thing that you don't want to see in this thread?

ZShakespeare posted:

I agree with everything you posted here, and it makes me want to give into nihilism because:

If this is true, and I desperately want to believe that it isn't, then we have lost and fighting for a better future is futile.

Kraftwerk posted:

Every revolutionary movement has a braintrust to harness popular discontent with the status quo.

The French Revolution, Russian Revolution and others took place due to misplays by people in power and outside forces like famines, wars, economic crises or environmental issues that contributed to these things. In all cases the status quo was upset, a wave of popular discontent swept through the country and some people of middle class or bourgeoise background decided it was “their turn” and organized a movement to overthrow the status quo. They did this by taking basic issues such as famine, land reform or other things that upset the lower classes and codified it into a movement that harnessed the unfocused anger of the masses.

Back then all you needed was a printing press. Communities were also more homogenous and intertwined due to the more “organic” way that cities were built and evolved. Spreading an idea was more difficult but doable and it was easier to get a consensus in your community.

Today the very design of cities is such that forming communities is much tougher. The first thing I noticed about moving to Canada and living in suburbs most of my life was how estranged I felt from my neighbours and community compared to Europe. How nobody really says hi to you in the elevator and how nobody really gives a poo poo about their neighbour. Nobody really “knows” each-other and outside of basic societal expectations and decorum we don’t really trust one another either.

Say what you will about religion but it does a good job of glueing people together and I think Christianity had a major role in helping social democratic political movements succeed in Canada among other places. Now even religion has been co opted to advance the interests of capital so you can’t count on it.

But I digress. Fighting for a better future is possible. But it requires a consensus we have been unable to achieve because we have failed to convince people of the truth of our politics today.

The truth is that it doesn’t really matter who you vote for because the rich have purchased all the choices on your ballot that stand a chance of winning and thus the politicians work for them and not us.

To take out your hate or political dissatisfaction on Trudeau or PP or Harper is a waste of time because they aren’t really in charge.

The ones who are really in charge are the Irvings, The Pattisons, The Westons, The Rogers family and the other wealthy people who represent a de facto aristocracy in our country. You won’t get to them by voting. You get to them by threatening their interests in other ways. Those are the people who make the real decisions. Everyone else is a patsy for when that decision pisses you off.

On top of that there’s foreign megacorps who also write the laws and make the decisions.


All that said. Until there’s an outside crisis that somehow undermines the fortunes of these companies or until people become aware where political power in neoliberal countries truly comes from, nothing will change.

To quote a former Stasi officer:
“You can’t shoot capitalism. If you could we’d have done it already”

RC01214 posted:

So what all you posters, despite your differences, are saying are that there is nothing to discuss or debate due to lack of actionable political activity in Canada, with all potentially relevant activities being down in the USA.
Maybe we do not need this thread at all, except for doomposting, since relevant economic policy is discussed in the Canadian debt thread.

ZShakespeare posted:

ZShakespeare posted:

If the NDP managed to elect an anti zionist leader, they'd just get buried like they did to the absolute boy Corbyn.

Isentropy posted:

Yeah we can agree that electoralism in a system where the press and who can run is controlled by the rich is just a rigged game and the good guys only win by mistake/error. If Niki Ashton or Angus won she'd have gotten the Corbyn treatment

RC01214 posted:

Then it sounds that this thread is better categorized under the LAN subforum, but that subforum seems too specifically regional, so I understand why this thread is here instead.
Unfortunately, I have nothing more to add to this discussion.

RC01214 posted:

Then it sounds that this thread is better categorized under the LAN subforum, but that subforum seems too specifically regional, so I understand why this thread is here instead.
Unfortunately, I have nothing more to add to this discussion.

Arivia posted:

Presuming you mean the Liberals, the national child care plan is huge for women.

Bleck posted:

The one that'll benefit a vanishingly small, almost certainly means-tested percentage of the populace? That doesn't address any of the material conditions and social strata that led to child care being such a hot button issue in the first place? Conditions and strata that are observably, consistently and enthusiastically fostered by Liberal policy?

If the Liberals even do it at all, which I frankly doubt?

Mr Luxury Yacht posted:

They already did it. The bill passed in 2021 and was why there was all that "Hey there's actually some $10 a day daycare spots now" thing a while ago including fights with the provinces to actually get on board.

The 2016 Canada Child Benefit also dropped the child poverty rate by a significant amount.

ARACHTION posted:

Voting is the perfect representation of the atomization and individualization of neoliberal ideology. We have people fretting for days about what their individual vote will do, when that is just one tick.

Collective action is what gets positive change happening and a lot of it is currently legal(ish) in our country. At least in BC, there is a huge uptick of unionization, and the people in those new unions are increasingly radical, coming into the movement already aware of its failures and neoliberal co-opting. It’s slow, but it’s happening, and is happening at much more rapid pace in the US, which is great because we’re always a few years behind them.

Look at the UAW strike and its ripple effects. 130% wage gains for some workers, overnight elimination of two tier wage systems. The masterful use of real organizing and strategy when striking. Thousands of workers trying to join them now, unionizing places people said were impossible.

Vote for who you want, vote strategically, don’t vote, or vote 3 times it doesn’t matter individually.

(This next bit is not directed at any one poster, just at the general hopelessness I see in about 40/50% of the population, whom if they were activated could move mountains)

Either way, in my opinion, the biggest hurdle to positive change is the MANY people who agree with you, but don’t believe a better world is possible and won’t take any action to achieve it.

I don’t have time for naysayers anymore. Repeating to yourself that nothing better is ever possible is a nice comfortable blanket that keeps you from ever having to do anything. I am no naive and understand the stranglehold the rich have on everything. But life has always been a constant struggle between good and bad forces, and I know I will spend my time on earth trying to do my part to move it a bit in a better direction.

I’m no utopian, but revolutions have always seemed impossible until they weren’t.

RC01214 posted:

I agree with you on collective action being important to wages.
Apologies for repeating my previous post, but If I am already part of a BC Union, what specifically can I do to help my union?
Unfortunately, I do not have friends or family I can convince to join the union nor do they qualify for it, and my coworkers are already part of the union.

infernal machines posted:

Do you have the time/interest to run for a shop steward or board position? Do you know if your local is active in supporting regional labour initiatives, and if they're not, do you think the leadership would be open to it?

IDK what union you're in and there can be a pretty wide gap in involvement from industry to industry and local to local, but it's a place to start.

RC01214 posted:

Not sure if I can give any specific union in case I get doxxed, but I might just be paranoid.
Think union is supporting Vancouver's labour initiatives, but unsure of where to find the specifics, save for last year's wage increases.
Do not think any shop steward or board positions are open at the moment. Or do you mean Job steward?

infernal machines posted:

Sorry, shop steward is probably more specific, the general term would be steward. If there aren't any open positions now, would you have the time or interest to run for one during your next election? The idea being you can become more involved in union activities, get to know your fellow members a bit more by helping to represent/engage on their behalf, and ultimately have a position within the local to make suggestions on further involvement in local issues.

Don't doxx yourself over this or share anything more than you're comfortable with, it's just a very broad suggestion based on your interest in further engagement.

Wistful of Dollars posted:

TIL that the Canadian Pain Society isn’t what it sounds like.

RC01214 posted:

I should have enough time to run for a position in the next election, but I am not sure if it will conflict with my existing job.

infernal machines posted:

I should clarify that I am not a union member, but I've worked closely with a number of locals (and their broader federal lobbying orgs) in a few different sectors, providing support and services over the last 15 years. So while I'm not directly involved, I've watched the sausage being made for a while and at this point I've worked with a few of them longer than any of the board have.

I've seen some pretty big shifts in the operation of at least one of them*, and it was all due to the membership deciding they wanted better representation and effectively turning over the board one election. I think it's worked out pretty well for them, and the new president is a lot more engaged in broader labour mobilizations than the old ones ever were.

*And to a lesser extent another, on the lines of equity, inclusion, and representation focus internally

Wistful of Dollars posted:

TIL that the Canadian Pain Society isn’t what it sounds like.

RC01214 posted:

To clarify, I am not certain I can be a job steward and a crown corporation employee at the same time, or is that not an issue?

infernal machines posted:

I do not know, none of the orgs I work with are crown corps. I don't know why that would be an issue, assuming your union membership stems from your employment for said crown corp, but you could make a call to your local to inquire.